Don’t let your cyber defences take a holiday

As staff head off on holiday, work from hotels, cafés and airports, and businesses operate with reduced cover, cyber criminals are looking for exactly the same opportunities.

The timing is no coincidence. In one survey of organisations across the UK, US, France and Germany, 86 per cent of those hit by ransomware said the attack took place over a weekend or public holiday.

Some of the biggest ransomware incidents of recent years have also been launched deliberately over holiday periods – a pattern significant enough to prompt formal warnings from the FBI and US cyber security authorities. For attackers, knowing when the usual decision-makers and IT teams are away can be just as valuable as finding a technical vulnerability.

According to Connectus Business Solutions CEO Roy Shelton, many organisations face the same pressures during the summer months: annual leave and temporary cover, responsibilities handed to colleagues who would not normally handle them, staff working remotely from unfamiliar locations, and key decision-makers who may be difficult to reach when an urgent issue arises.

“Cyber criminals plan around the calendar just like the rest of us. The difference is that August can be their busy season,” says Mr Shelton.

“An out-of-office reply can tell an attacker exactly who is away and when they will be back, while the colleague you would normally sanity-check something with might be sitting on a beach. The technology hasn’t changed, but your safety net has.”

The risks are often surprisingly straightforward. Laptops connected to public Wi-Fi can be exposed to malicious or spoofed networks. Devices can be left unlocked, unencrypted or unpatched after an update is postponed until after a flight. Phishing and payment fraud can be timed for moments when the person being impersonated is unavailable to confirm a request.

At the same time, reduced staffing can create monitoring gaps, allowing suspicious activity to go unnoticed for longer than it normally would.

“Most summer incidents don’t start with anything sophisticated,” says Mr Shelton. “They start with a laptop on hotel Wi-Fi, an update postponed until after the flight, or an urgent payment approved from a sun lounger because the boss couldn’t be reached.”

Mr Shelton offers five simple tips for working safely away from the office this summer:

1. Treat public Wi-Fi as public.
That café, hotel or airport network is available to everyone using it. Where possible, use a mobile hotspot or a company VPN rather than connecting directly to an unfamiliar network. This helps protect traffic from interception and other network-based attacks.

2. Keep devices locked down – physically and digitally.
A laptop left unattended on a table or an unlocked phone on a sun lounger is a genuine security risk. Make sure every device has a strong PIN, password or biometric lock, with full-disk encryption enabled and automatic locking set to a short timeout.

3. Be extra alert to phishing.
Summer often means checking emails quickly on a phone between meetings, flights or family activities – exactly the conditions attackers can exploit. Take a moment before clicking links or opening attachments, particularly when a request feels urgent or out of character. For unusual payment or access requests, verify them through a separate channel such as a phone call.

4. Don’t let updates slide.
It is easy to dismiss a software update when you are trying to finish work before heading to the airport. Where possible, enable automatic updates and make sure devices are fully patched before staff go away, rather than relying on someone to deal with it during their holiday.

5. Plan for reduced cover, not just reduced staffing.
Businesses need to think about what happens when the people who normally spot and respond to problems are away. Clear escalation procedures, proactive monitoring and reliable technical support can help ensure that a reduced internal team does not become a reduced security team.

For Connectus, the lesson is the same all year round: cyber security works best when it is proactive rather than reactive.

“The businesses that come through the summer unscathed are often the ones that have treated these basics as routine rather than optional,” says Mr Shelton. “Proactive monitoring, secure connectivity and having a team watching the network when your own people are out of the office can make a significant difference.”